PlasmaScape – Early Access Preview

v.007

PlasmaScape is a tool designed for scientifically accurate depiction of the Solar System, its immediate interstellar surroundings and the nearest stars.

At the moment, there are three main scales that are to be captured: the scale of the Solar System and the heliosphere (roughly 100 astronomical units in size), the scale of the Local Interstellar Cloud (roughly 30 light years in size) and the scale of the Local Interstellar Chimney and the Gould Belt (roughly 1000 light years in size).

The motivation behind creating PlasmaScape is the recent rise of evidence that the alignments of the objects and observable phenomena in the Solar System do not seem random with respect to the previously mentioned surrounding plasma structures. The main idea here, therefore, is to map all the relevant geometries in a single interactive 3D environment to provide a tool for researchers to properly identify the possible interactions between the Solar System and the interstellar plasma.

The information about these plasma structures is available in scientific literature, yet the narrow specialization of sciences rarely allows them to be put together or even considered important. As an example, a solar physicist would discard the information about the processes at the edge of the heliosphere as irrelevant, yet there is no doubt that the solar magnetic cycle involves not only the Sun itself, but the whole heliosphere, significantly altering the behavior of plasma up to 100 astronomical units from the Sun.

Our starting point is to assume the existence of connection between these different scales. If there is no connection, we would not find anything. But if there is a connection, then it would be impossible to find without making this first step – properly mapping these structures and relating them to each other.

This is currently a work in progress, and many new features will be added in the forthcoming updates.